(no subject)

[timelets]

As Samuel Johnson famously said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." It looks like national-patriotism is going to be the key conservative issue for the 2020 elections.

The national conservatism we are developing is going to have some hard edges and provoke some clever counterattacks and dismissals.

An important virtue of the nation-state is that it is a constraint.

Resources are limited. Lasting achievement is possible only within a structure. My own favorite field, economics, is out of favor these days, but it has at least one profound truth, that of opportunity cost: Everything we do necessarily involves not doing something else.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-nationalist-awakening-11563574717

"Америка не резиновая". It's a good fit because Trump knows how to sell patriotism and he loves playing a zero-sum game.

Comments

[tijd]

Counterpoint from Anne Applebaum:

"But there is a reason that, in recent history, we have consistently spoken about civic patriotism and not nationalism in the United States: because we are not, and never will be, a nation held together by ethnic blood ties. In its way, this is what gives us our strength. All nations are imagined communities, and our imagined community is based on a uniquely inspiring set of principles. Americans have proved that they can be loyal to, and will fight on behalf of, a more complex, more cerebral national ideal, one derived from ideas of democracy and justice as opposed to blood and soil. By contrast, those who promote a narrower, nativist definition of America will weaken and divide us, as the president is already doing. They will teach us to hate one another and lose us the respect we once had abroad."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/conservative-intellectuals-are-at-a-turning-point-normalize-trump-or-resist-him/2019/07/19/25e5b06e-a978-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html

[timelets]

I understand her point. The problem is that all he needs is to gain 5% among undecided voters in swing states and he'll do anything to manipulate their natural sense of patriotism to get there.

[tijd]

"then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power"
https://timelets.dreamwidth.org/1019565.html